


Autumn

by Susan



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Susan/pseuds/Susan





	Autumn

I wondered sometimes if the job was the wire that connected us, the thread that tied us together. I worried that when the job was gone, when it was just us, he’d look at me and wonder a little too. I worried that our common ground had been built on fault lines we’d never seen. 

We left the force within a year of each other—Starsky because he could never be what he’d been before—me because I didn’t have the heart to do it without him. We came here and started over. And discovered that the job had been just that. A job. 

 

There are four seasons here, shifting skies and changing colors. They remind us of our childhoods, and we paint them as they pass, each in our own way. With camera or pen and ink, we’ve learned the art of happiness.

His scars have faded now, the edges worn smooth by time and memory. I watch him undress some nights and try to remember how he used to look. Were his eyes ever more blue than this?

 

The past still comes to us sometimes, less often than it used to. Dobey flew out the day before Gunther was released—he said he didn’t want us to read about his parole in the newspaper. Starsky grew silent, then whistled for Titus and went for a long walk in the woods behind the house. He settled something that afternoon—with himself, or maybe with God. 

Huggy visited once, but the fresh air made him nervous—he said he liked to see what he was breathing. Starsky’s mother stayed with us the year before she died. It was faster than the doctors predicted, but she and Starsky had time to talk about all the things they needed to. She taught me to make honey cake and latkes and how to say the Shabbas prayers. We buried her one cold spring morning next to his father. 

It’s autumn now, our twentieth in this small house, and the orchard is heavy with apples—Lobos and Cortlands and Macs. We planted new trees last fall, heirloom apples we bought from a grower in Vermont. The new fruit is sweet and white under pale red skin—we eat them outside and burn leaves in the slanting sun of afternoon. 

Last night, in the silence that comes before sleep, when the truth hovers just below the surface of things, I asked him what he was thinking. 

“Counting my blessings,” he murmured.

“And I am one of your blessings, Starsk?” 

“Since long before I started counting.” 

“Is this…” Is this life enough? I wanted to ask. I kissed him instead, open-mouthed and as hungry as I’d been the first time, years before. 

“Is this love?” he asked, breathless, when he pulled away, his hard cock pressed up against mine. “Damn well better be.”

It damn well was, I wanted to say. But then his mouth pressed down on mine until there was no space left for words.


End file.
